you always had my number
by nanrea
Summary: After four years of miscommunication and dancing around his feelings, Hubert might be ready to move on. Pascal, on the other hand, might finally be coming to an understanding. Also poor planning can make even routine field expeditions super exciting in all the wrong ways.


A/N: Written for K'Arthur, for Tales of Santa 2016. Also posted on AO3, same bat title, same bat username

* * *

It was a routine monitoring mission to Fodra. Nothing to get nervous about. In the four years since dealing with the Little Queen Hubert had accompanied Pascal on several such missions, as she travelled to the planet every three months or so and generally would ask for everyone to come with her. Though most of their companions were busy with one issue or another, there had always been someone else able to free up their schedule enough to visit Telos Astue and the Core with Pascal when Hubert managed to accompany her.

Just because this would be the first time he would be _alone_ with her on such a jaunt, indeed, alone with her since that last disastrous night in Telos Astue four years ago, was absolutely no reason what so ever to feel as if perhaps several chirpees had chosen this moment to make a nest in his stomach.

Even _Sophie_ was too busy to come with this time? Hubert struggled to keep his hands still as he watched the shuttle settle into the sand outside the west gate to Yu Liberte, trying to wrap his head around it. Sophie. Too busy. As far as he was aware, his adopted niece had few responsibilities aside from the self appointed task of tending to the numerous gardens she had planted throughout Windor. Surely she had enough time to act as a buffer- or rather to tend to the important task of helping Pascal monitor the recovery of Fodra's core?

 _Now, now_ , he reminded himself as he watched the shuttle hatch open and lower to allow him to enter, _it's just Pascal, and whatever crush you may have had on her in the past must be put aside. No amount of hinting has worked so you've resolved to move on, remember?_ So wrapped up was he in his thoughts that he failed to notice the high pitched noise or the woman who came hurtling out of the shuttle door while making it.

"Huuuuuuuu," Pascal shouted as she threw herself out the shuttle door at him, impacting his chest and wrapping wiry arms around him as he staggered back. "It's been ages since you've come with me to Fodra!" She pushed away from him as he struggled in the sand to regain his footing. "Gosh, how come you're never able to come with on these things?"

He pushed his glasses up, half out of necessity and half to cover the blush he felt creeping across his cheeks. Straightening, he said, "Really, Pascal, are such antics necessary every time you see me? It's only been a month since I last saw you, for one thing, and I cannot always clear my schedule to be available for these trips." He paused and looked down at her, considering. "Although it is good to see you again, as always." He was fairly certain he had only missed three of these jaunts in the last two or three years, even if the last two times had also been her last two trips up, but did not bring this up in the face of Pascal's pout.

"It's still not fair that you managed to get out of it the last time, though," she muttered. "So, anyway, you ready to go?"

"Of course," he said, and followed her as she darted back into the shuttle.

"Good!" she said as she clattered to the front of the ship and threw herself into the pilot seat. "I really don't want to spend any more time in the desert than I have to. It's so hot out there, Hu, how can you stand it?"

"Years of practice," he answered as he followed at a more sedate pace, sitting down in his usual spot and strapping himself in tightly.

Pascal merely grunted as she checked the shuttle's systems before lifting away, and Hubert made no attempt to continue the conversation. No matter how many times he rode in the shuttle, he would never get used to the unnerving sight of the ground dropping away, nor the quite frankly horrifying sight of the two lasers used to break the envelope around Ephenia firing and hitting the sky ahead of them as they dove through. He was quite happy to allow the conversation to die in favor of white knuckling the arms of his seat while Pascal handled navigating through this nightmare obstacle course, though usually she was never quite this concentrated on her flying. He hoped that didn't mean there was something wrong with the shuttle again.

He could do without another crash landing, quite frankly.

Seeing how small their world truly was never stopped taking his breath away. As Pascal angled the shuttle in for a landing at the entrance to Fodra's Lastalia, he got a sweeping view of that planet as well. The red dust of its endless wastes were slowly being broken up by tiny patches of green and blue as the eleth from the core began to circulate through the rest of the planet once again, a sight that was both heartening and a reminder of how close Ephinia had been to following its sister planet into ruin.

"So we're checking the core first?" he asked idly once the shuttle was down, wincing inwardly at how inane the question was.

"Yuppo," Pascal answered, her tone cheerful as she stood and stretched. "I figured we'd get that out of the way and then head to Telos Astue so I can check in with Psi."

"Hmm," he said noncommittally, following her off the shuttle. He idly checked over his dual blades while she bounced over to the monitoring station to begin diagnostics. He was startled when Pascal let out an uncharacteristic groan of frustration and looked at her in time to see her slam closed the cover of the console.

"Great! Just great." She rubbed at her temple, leaving behind a smear of dust. "We actually have to go down into the core this time and reboot the data transmitter."

"Ah," he said. "That is not so very unusual, though, is it? I seem to recall having to do that the last time I was with you, as well. Frankly it's shocking you managed to get it running at all."

"Yeah, well, maybe I didn't want to have to do it this time," she muttered. Planting her fists on her hips, she turned to survey the transport pads. "Too much to hope that they're still activated, too."

Hubert rubbed his chin, wondering at Pascal's frankly odd behavior. As far as he knew, having to reboot the data transmitter or simply checking the core manually was routine, so far as something like this could be routine. The technology was a millennia old, and prone to breakdowns. This was his eighth or ninth trip to the core, and he could only recall two in which the machinery was fully functional enough to not necessitate a trip through the Lastalia. By this point all of them knew the fastest route through the maze of broken pathways practically by heart and even with only two of them, the monsters that still inhabited the area, much thinner in numbers without the Little Queen there to encourage their growth, should pose little problem.

Quite frankly, he was starting to wonder if Pascal was alright. He watched as she stomped her foot on the transport pad which lead to the strange and watery depths of the core. It failed to light up, and she cursed, surprising him greatly. He struggled to recall the last time she had genuinely lost her temper as she strode angrily to the next transport pad, the one that lead to the depths. Luckily for the transporter, it swirled to life beneath her feet.

Her behavior was puzzling, he decided as he joined her on the transporter. She activated it almost as soon as he was fully inside the ring, and his yelp at this was split in half between the docks and the green field floating deep within the Lastalia. Yes, he thought as she rushed off in the direction of the transmitter. Definitely weirder than normal. He followed at a more sedate pace, keeping an eye out for monsters. Pascal never rushed through gathering data from Fodra's core. Something was definitely up.

He didn't have long to ponder the mystery, though, because as he followed Pascal through the twisting course and up to the data transmitter, he heard her angry shout, drowned out at the end by the roar of a monster.

"Oh, no." With a burst of speed, Hubert charged forward, already drawing his dual blades as he came around the curve of the floating grass platform. Pascal was taking potshots at the beast, and Hubert felt his heart sink at the sight of it. Even with Sophie, Asbel and the others, a conflagrate hulk was still a significant challenge. He glanced around, hoping for a way to escape the situation, but even if they ran, there was little chance of getting away from it quickly enough. It would more likely trap them against a ledge.

Hubert gulped down a fortifying breath. Best just to fight it here and hope for the best.

After years of fighting together they were able to settle quickly into a familiar rhythm, Pascal staying back to cast while Hubert darted in with a quick flurry of slashes and artes, before he pulled back to catch his breath and Pascal's artes showered the monster in a dizzying flurry of damage, and when necessity dictated, Pascal rushing in to hammer it with her shotstaff while Hubert readied a curative spell to take care of any wounds they themselves received.

Perhaps it was this very comfort of familiarity that allowed Pascal to lower her guard briefly, a deadly pause that gave the hulk opportunity to catch her with a blow that sent her flying.

Hubert gave a strangled shout, the healing arte stuttering to a halt around him as he broke into a sprint, and strength he rarely had chance to call on surged through him as he leaped over the hulk, surrounding it in a cage of energy as he passed over its head, firing his dual blades madly at its armored skull. The attack felled the beast temporarily, and more importantly, stopped it from hammering Pascal with an overhand blow that could have killed her. It surged to its feet again before Hubert could press his advantage, but he was able to dodge its clumsy blow and get it to turn away from where Pascal was struggling to her knees.

"Pascal," he shouted desperately, longing to rush to her side but knowing that turning his back on the monster before it was dead could be fatal to them both. "Are you alright?"

"Just great," he heard her groan before being forced to dance around the blast of energy the monster shot toward him. A sharp cry of pain nearly sent him stumbling before he was able to right himself, and only years of training kept him from breaking his concentration on the monster to turn toward her.

He needed to end this, and fast. The hulk swung its jagged arm again, and he jumped back, trying to formulate a plan, but concern for Pascal split his concentration and he just couldn't think. He slashed forward desperately, aiming for the creature's odd, gaping middle and unleashing a barrage of projectiles before leaping back, and in that leap a wave of missiles crashed into it as Pascal's odd little mechanoid replica of Sophie spun into the opening he had made.

Injured, but not too injured to cast. Hubert allowed the wave of relief at that realization to carry him forward into another vaulting attack over the monster's head. Together, he and Mecha Sophie slammed into the monstrous hulk, one from either side, and finally, finally, the crystal mass at the center of the thing's form crumbled. The monster gave a cry and collapsed, lifeless, to the ground.

Hubert stood panting, staring at it as Mecha Sophie gave a sweeping bow and disappeared in a swirl of eleth. "Pascal," he gasped out, and turned around, locating her seated in the grass a dozen paces from him. One leg was gathered under her, the other sprawled at an awkward angle in front of her, and she was leaning heavily on her shotstaff, which she had planted firmly in the ground beside her.

She winced as he hurried up beside her, assessing the damage. "This trip is going nothing like I had planned," she groaned through gritted teeth. Sweat stood on her brow, and she winced with every breath.

Hubert huffed a laugh, torn between asking when she ever planned things and when their plans ever went, well, according to plan. In the end he settled on, "Tell me where it hurts worst."

Pascal shook her head, and winced at the movement. "Everywhere." She grimaced as he reached out to ease her into lying flat in the grass. "Leg. I think it's broken. Ribs. Probably just bruised." She winced again as moving her uninjured leg jostled her other one. "Other than that I feel right as rain! Well." His breath stuttered as she reached her hand up to his face and touched his cheek, and he bit back a hiss of his own pain when she pressed a cut on his cheek. "At least I'm not bleeding anywhere."

He frowned at her, more out of habit than because he was upset by her levity. She sighed again, letting her hand drop. "I'll have to check your leg before I can do any healing for you," he said after a moment. "If it is broken, we'll need to try to set it."

"We can use the base of my shotstaff for a splint," she offered. "I'd rather not cut any trees down here, if I'm honest. Who knows what Fodra would think of it."

He nodded, and pulled her staff out of the ground.

"Just twist off the top," she instructed, tugging at her scarf. "We can use this to bind it."

Hubert eyed her scarf appraisingly. It was an attractive shade of green, and unless he missed his guess, had been a gift from Fourier. It was also made of fairly flimsy material. He shook his head. "We'll need something more sturdy. I'll have to use my coat."

"Not your coat!" Pascal seemed more upset by this than Hubert, half sitting up and then grasping her side with a wince.

He shook his head as he finished unscrewing the top of Pascal's staff from the shaft. He carefully set the mechanism aside and began shrugging out of his coat. "It's fine, Pascal, I have several other coats at home. This is an old one, anyway."

Which was true: he had recently been promoted to captain, which came with a change in the design of his officer's coat. He had worn an old lieutenant coat today simply to save on wear and tear of his new uniform, but he was now relieved that he had: the captain's uniform coat did not come with the ridiculous fluttering panels that the lieutenant's uniform had. They would be very useful, here: easy to tear into strips but strong enough to not fray apart, and not at all valued like Pascal's scarf.

How he hated those ugly fluttering panels. He set upon ripping them off the bottom of the coat and into strips with a vengeance.

Pascal leaned back into the grass with a sigh. "I'm so sorry, Hu," she said.

"For what?" he asked, pausing in his motions. "There's nothing you should apologize for. Monsters attack, and I knew the risks when I agreed to come." He bundled up the coat and offered to place it under her head. She caught his eyes with hers, luminous amber made no less beautiful by the grimace of pain on her face, and he felt himself falling in love with her all over again.

So much for getting over her.

She shook her head. "If I had waited a couple days then Sophie and Cheria would have been able to come, too," she said. "Then you wouldn't have had to ruin your coat-"

"I don't care about my coat." Hubert shook his head, exasperated. "And if you'd waited, I wouldn't have been able to come at all. Pascal, please." He eased her up as gently as he could and settled his coat under her head. "Don't worry about my stupid coat. Now let me look at your leg so I can heal it."

"Ugh. Do you have to set it first?" she groaned, and he tsked as he scooted down to study the area, looking for swelling or broken skin. "Can't you just glowee glowee it all better right away?"

"Only if you want it healed wrong," he answered, piling his makeshift bandages neatly beside him and lining up the shaft of her shotstaff parallel to her leg. "If it is broken then you'd have to break it again to get it set right. Unfortunately, I don't have Cheria's skill with healing artes. My skills are basic enough to accelerate the healing process and alleviate pain, but broken bones are a bit beyond what I am able to heal. We will need to set the leg." He took a deep, calming breath. "Believe me, I don't want to do this either."

She nodded, closing her eyes. "Okay. I guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be," she said.

He nodded in turn, ignoring for now that she couldn't see him do it. "Where does it hurt?"

"Shin, mostly," she said.

He reached out, ignoring every instinct that said to touch gently, and instead firmly kneaded her shin, ignoring the texture of the fine hairs that spotted her leg and the contrast of skin and fabric. She jerked under his hands, biting back a cry of pain as he came to a spot where the bone moved unnaturally under his hand. He jerked his hands back as if burned at the sensation. "Ugh. Sorry! Definitely broken," he said. "Sorry."

She waved a hand vaguely at him, panting. He scrambled down to pull her boot off, explaining as he went. "Have to be able to check your circulation after I splint it, so I'll need this off." He eased it off carefully, trying to avoid moving her leg too much, or tug on it. Then he returned to his original position and grasped her knee firmly in one hand and her ankle in the other. "This is going to hurt," he said, and it was the only warning he gave her.

She didn't hold back on the screaming, he had to grant her that.

When it was over, he checked the pulse point in her foot and was relieved to feel it beating. Working as quickly as he could, he splinted and wrapped the leg, and by the time he was done he was panting as hard as she was. The cut on his cheek was a distracting burn, and he was becoming aware of other aches and pains as he leaned back and tilted his head back, staring up into the misty void of the Lastalia shaft. He was exhausted, and he still had to try to heal her enough that the trek back out wouldn't injure her worse.

"I don't suppose either of us thought to pack apple gels," he asked in lieu of any healing.

Pascal hiccupped. "No," she answered, and her voice was full of such abject misery that he turned and looked at her. Her eyes were red, and her face was a flushed mess of drying tears. Her hair was damp with sweat, and she looked- He didn't know how to describe how she looked. Like someone had kicked her dog, maybe. He didn't know what to make of it: it seemed like it was more than just having taken a bad fall in an unexpected monster fight.

"Pascal," he said, as gently as he could. She met his gaze, and the question died in his throat. "It'll be alright," he said instead, even though he wasn't sure what he was reassuring her about. He brushed a lock of white hair out of her face, and summoned up that energy that he could always feel buzzing through him, right under his breastbone, ever since he was nine years old. He let the light pool around them, and even though he was still tired, he could feel some of the ache leave him, and could see the pain lines etched in her face ease a little.

After a moment, he let the power fade. "Well. Shall we return to the ship?" he asked.

"We can't yet!" she grabbed his wrist. "We still have to fix the data transmitter!"

"I- Wha- Pascal! How can you possibly expect to fix it in your state? I told you, I can accelerate your healing, but we really should get back to civilization and give your leg a proper check over before advancing it any further, and-"

"It just needs to be rebooted, probably. I'm pretty sure I can talk you through it, and it's right over there."

Pascal pointed. Hubert, following the line of her finger, could indeed see the top of the vine covered device poking out above the rise of the path. He sighed, dropping his forehead into the palm of his hand. "This really isn't the time, Pascal."

She shook her head. "We won't be able to check the core ourselves, like this. So we need to fix the data transmitter." She caught his eye, and glared at him.

"Alright," he conceded. "Since it's right there."

o

"How's it coming in there?" Pascal asked. She had directed him through the steps of cracking open the power panel, checking various connections, ensuring various ports were thoroughly secure, and switches flipped. He was half way under one opened panel, struggling to remove enough vines from a set of detached connectors that she had finally determined was the root of the issue to get them reconnected, when the conversation suddenly took an odd turn.

"Oh, just dandy," he called over his shoulder, gathering his knees under him for leverage to give the tenacious vine a vicious tug to uproot it.

"So how's the President's daughter?"

Hubert tugged backward and the vine snapped unexpectedly. He hit the cover to the panel with a solid thump before flopping backward into the grass, dazed. "What?" he asked.

"You know, that girl you were going to marry. The President's daughter?"

"Amala? When was I going to marry her?" He rolled over and craned his neck, trying to get a good look at Pascal. "Why bring this up? This really doesn't strike me as the best time."

Pascal was still seated where he'd left her, plucking at the grass with an odd sort of look on her face. "No reason." Her voice was flat. Hubert frowned as she asked again, "So how is she?"

"Fine, I would imagine," Hubert replied, pushing up his glasses. "I hear she is expecting her first child, now. She ended up making a love match several years ago, and all sources say she is quite content."

Pascal heaved a sigh, a slight frown tugging at her lips. "Hmm," was her only response.

Hubert turned more fully towards her. "Pascal, are you sure you're quite feeling alright? Perhaps we should head back-"

"We can't leave until you finish rebooting the transmitter," she interrupted. "I was just curious, alright."

He studied her for another minute. She still wasn't meeting his eye, but in the end he acquiesced. "Alright," he said. "I think I'm almost done under here anyway." With that, he crawled back under the panel and studied the cables.

Freed of their viney entanglement, they were able to meet once again at the coupling, and he was just forcing the prongs back into alignment, trying to avoid the sparks that started jumping as they got close to each other again, when Pascal spoke again. "Do you ever regret not marrying her?"

Hubert nearly dropped the cables. "What?" he squawked, then jammed the prong ends together, ignoring the shock that numbed his fingers, and scrambled out of the machine while behind and above him the transmitter whirled to life. "Pascal, what is bringing this on?"

"Nothing!" Her eyes were wide and she tried to force an innocent smile on her face as she cheered, "Way to go, Hu! I knew you could get it running again!"

Evasive tactics. Hubert sighed. "So it should be fully functional now that we've restored the power?" he asked instead of what he really wanted to ask, which basically boiled down to 'Where is your head injured?' "Then we should return to the dock as soon as possible. We need adequate medical care."

Pascal nodded, looking relieved. "Yeah, that should have rebooted everything. Normally I'd stay down here to make sure it goes through system set up correctly-"

"Out of the question," Hubert vetoed this idea immediately. "We are going back up."

"Well, yeah," she said, as if offended. "It'll take a while for this thing to finish setting up enough for me to check it, anyway, and I can do that from up there. So let's get crackin, Hu!" And she lifted her hands up in the air like a child asking for someone to pick them up.

He sighed, and caught her hands.

o

It was probably fortunate that Pascal had insisted that everyone learn the basics of piloting the shuttle. After a quick check up both of her leg (satisfactory) and the completed setup of the data transmitter (functional and compiling again, whatever that meant), Hubert took up the pilot's seat while Pascal had been grudgingly settled in one of the front passenger seats. The short hop to Telos Astue was mercifully uneventful, but Hubert ended up setting the shuttle down outside the ruined city rather than attempting to enter the hangar himself.

Psi, as silently helpful as ever, had managed to indicate, with pantomime and a rather bold grab of Hubert's hand, that Emeraude's old chamber was as adequate for checking over human systems as it was for humanoids. With him helping Hubert to man the systems, they were able to perform a medical scan on Pascal that, much to Hubert's relief at least, showed that her leg had been correctly set and was healing properly, with the arte he had already used accelerating things as he had told her it would. Another application of healing magic and a good meal had sent both of them into a deep slumber after that, Pascal still on Emeraude's platform and himself slumped under yet another console.

He had had less restful sleeps, granted, but few which gave rise to such a ferocious crick in his neck.

Pascal was still snoring away when he woke, itchy and restless and more confused than ever. She hadn't asked him anymore odd questions, but she hadn't lost that oddly subdued attitude, either, and he wasn't sure how to handle a Pascal who wasn't, well. Certainly she could be serious when the situation warranted, and prone to occasional acts of whimsy that left him mystified, but the intuition he was trying to listen to more often was telling him this wasn't just Pascal's typical antics.

Hubert dug his fingers into the tight muscles joining his neck and shoulder, suddenly irritated. A walk, clearly, was necessary.

Telos Astue was an eery place no matter the time of day, he decided as his feet drew him through the ruined city. Still creepiest at night, though, he decided as his feet scuffed the cracked pavement.

He supposed he shouldn't be surprised that he had wandered into the highest level of the city, near the record hall. This is where his disastrous attempt at confessing to Pascal had occurred, after all, and though it had been four years, he had yet to scrape together the courage to try again. Pascal asking about the President's daughter earlier had brought the whole ridiculous incident back to the front of his mind, and he shook his head.

"Take a bath for my wedding," he muttered, the raw scrape of his voice echoing in the empty space. "Huh." That was perhaps the most outlandish wedding gift he had ever been offered, he supposed.

"Seemed like the right response at the time."

Pascal's voice behind him nearly made him jump out of his skin, and he spun around. "Pascal! I didn't realize you were up." He watched as she took a few limping steps forward, leaning heavily on the shaft of her deconstructed staff, and wondered that she'd managed to sneak up on him at all; she was not moving quietly by any definition of the word. "You shouldn't be walking, yet. Is something wrong?"

She shook her head, despite the pallor of her face, visible even in the dim light. "I'm sorry, Hu," she said. "Nothing on this trip went right at all, and I really wanted it to, too. I . . . I wanted it to go right, you know? So I could, I don't know. You know?"

"Ah," Hubert said. "No?"

She groaned and tugged at her white forelock. "I mean, I had something I wanted to tell you, I guess, and now it all feels messed up and why didn't you marry the President's daughter?"

"What do you mea- why do you keep asking about Paradine's daughter?"

The blush was immediate and obvious, considering how pale she had been before. "Well I mean. You said you couldn't marry her because you were thinking of me, and it didn't make any sense."

"Pascal, that was four years ago. Why are you so hung up on it now?"

He watched as she groaned again and hobbled over to the steps to the memory hall, plopping down on them with a puff of dust and a grimace of pain. "I guess. I mean you know how Cheria and Asbel are finally getting around to tying the knot, right?"

"I should think so," Hubert said wryly. "I'm in the wedding party."

She nodded. "Right, well, so am I." She didn't catch the roll of his eyes, then, having started staring at her fingers, fiddling with the staff. "And I guess I just started remembering what you said, you know, about getting an offer yourself." She sighed. "I know you said you'd turned her down, but I started wondering, you know, was it my fault? Why you turned her down? I mean I guess it sort of was, since you said you turned her down because of me, but I started wondering if you ever regretted it."

"Never," he replied instantly. "Not only is she quite happily married now to someone else, but we would never have suited anyway."

She blinked up at him. "Why not?"

Now it was his turn to blush. "I simply prefer more . . . independent women. With greater focus on . . . their own interests rather than what society expects of them." To such an extent they forget to bathe, he added silently. "In addition, I am not so interested in my political career that I would choose a bride simply to advance it." There. A practical, honest answer that skates around the fact that since he was seventeen years old there had only been one woman he was interested in, and despite waiting, first for her to become aware of his intentions, and then for those feelings to perhaps wain as she continued to be completely oblivious, for near on five years, she continued to be the only one he wanted. "We are much better off married to others, the both of us," he said with finality.

"Hmm." Her blush had not abated. Indeed it seemed to intensify. "And then I thought about the rest of what you said that night." Her hands went back to twisting themselves into knots around each other. "About not being able to, you know, think of anyone other than me, and I realized I've been having the same problem." This last came out at a bare whisper, and her shoulders had crept up until they were nearly at her ears.

Her face, he noted with detached interest over the burning sting of his own blush, was incredibly red. "Indeed?" he asked, with what he felt was remarkable calm.

"I mean for years!" she burst out, starting to her feet and beginning an odd limping pace. "You've been a constant thought in the back of my mind for years, and I barely even noticed! I'm always hoping for a message, looking for you every time I see the color blue, thinking about you when I'm trying to not think, talking to you when I'm just trying to talk to myself! And when I'm with you." She halted in front of him, eyes locked on his. "When I'm with you, it just feels like everything's right. But it's not."

Hubert felt like his entire body had locked up, and also like his face was going to melt off. This was so much worse than when he had tried to confess to her. He licked his lips, but no words came out.

"I guess what I mean is," she clenched her fingers together, face as red as half of her hair, "I mean I think I get what you were trying to tell me then. When you said that, what you meant was that you loved me. Because I'm pretty sure that I love you."

This was it. He was going to die.

"Right?"

Her eyes were luminous, consuming, like fire. He couldn't speak, or breathe, but he felt himself nodding, a single incline of the head, bringing his face closer to hers, his body leaning toward her, his hands of their own accord lifting to brush her burning cheeks before settling on her shoulders to pull her closer.

"Hu, say it to me like I'm an idiot, please," she said, suddenly smiling. "Give it to me straight, don't dance around it."

Anything. "Pascal, I-" He stumbled to a stop when she leaned up and brushed her lips against his.

"Just. I'm not really that good at picking up hints, Hu," she whispered, pulling away a little. "Got to be clear as possible. So tell me now what you tried to tell me then, please. Without telling me about any offers for marriage you might have had." She grinned. "I think I'm ready to hear it."

He pressed a finger against her lips and smirked. "I will as long as you stop interrupting me."

Pascal laughed, and interrupted him again, and again, but he couldn't bring himself to mind.

All in all, they decided later, a very productive trip to Fodra after all.


End file.
